One of my most favourite poets is Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933-). We are all isolated even as things are; we cannot permit ourselves the dangerous luxury of voluntary inner isolation.
In an impersonal world of information technology today, totally devoid of all genuine human feelings and passions, we have created the idea of forced collectivism, in which faces are erased in the name of facelessness.
Is it not a miserable parody of what overcoming isolation really means? Our isolation grows even deeper if it becomes more and more rigidly collective. But every face has its inner face, of which we are sometimes wary or else downright afraid.
To quote the appropriate words of Yevgeny Yevtushenko in this context: 'If we only stopped being frightened of revealing to each other these inner faces, we could see how close and akin to one another, how inseparable we are. Only masks hate each other. Our faces cannot hate each other; but our faces are covered by masks.' That is why Yevtushenko titled one of his books of collected poems as The Face Behind The Face. The most beautiful poem in this collection is 'The Face Behind The Face.' Here is this poem:
'Where does it live, the face behind the face?
Every one ought
To know all that there is
About the face that is his.
People often haven't a clue
About their very own 'I'
Each of us makes his own
Best defence counsel.
Nero apparently thought
He was a poet,
Hitler thought that he
Would redeem the world from woe!
The mean man thinks: 'I am so generous'.
The shallow man: 'I am profound'.
Sometimes God will sigh: 'I am a worm'.
The worm hisses: 'I am God'.
The worms climb arrogantly upwards
The coward rejoices to be in the clouds
Only the free man
Thinks: 'I am a slave'.
We in India are living in an age of fraud, deceit, hatred, malice and confusion-all created by our unscrupulous politicians (a flock of sheep in lion's clothing) and political parties-held together with a seemingly iron hand by a female hyena from Italy owing her religious allegiance to the Pope in Rome and political allegiance to the Western Powers. The following incandescent lines from Yevtushenko's poem 'METAMORPHOSES' can be made applicable to the present Indian situation:
'In moments of sudden confusion,
So as to regain your bearings,
Don't demean yourself
By feeling bitter.
Don't submit
To a hateful mob.
Don't fall prey
To a lust for revenge.
'An eye for an eye,
And a tooth for a tooth.....'
How utterly shallow!
How brainless the author!
What's all right for a cretin
In You is a cause for reproach.
'Holy malice'
Was Blok's invention.
Be poor with dignity,
Feel calm and refreshed!
Don't gnaw at yourself!
Don't gnaw at others.
But utter forgiveness
Of all grovellers
Is dire revenge
On your friends.
And compassion
Towards all who are brutal and boorish
Is madness,
Though with a crazy logic.
Oh, how repulsive
When one defeated
By scum
Proceeds to suck up to it.
Don't puff yourself up
Into terrible turbulence,
Don't drop down
To kiss all the arses!
Perhaps Yevtushenko foresaw the tragedy of India having a woman with dubious credentials as its first citizen in 2007. Truth can be difficult and slow. I think the common people of India want the truth, and they know that very often they aren't getting it, not only in politics but in the kind of TV and media entertainment they are being fed. There is this incredible longing to find something that really matters and that really helps us in our lives. This felt want and need can be met by the lines of great poets like Yevtushenko.
When I first read the poem called 'WOUNDS' by Yevtushenko, it had a bracing effect on me. I felt spiritually elevated and even cleansed. Yevtushenko's words seeped through every pore of my skin and went deep down into my soul and consciousness. This is Yevtushenko's message:
I have been wounded so often and so painfully,
Dragging my way home at the merest crawl,
Impaled not only by malicious tongues-
One can be wounded even by a petal.
And I myself have wounded-quite unwittingly-
With casual tenderness while passing by,
And later someone felt the pain,
It was like walking barefoot over ice.
So why do I step upon the ruins
Of those most near and dear to me,
I, who can be so simply and so sharply wounded
And can wound others with such deadly ease?
Recently I read a poem by Rita Dove. In 1993, she became the first African-American to be designated as Poet Laureate of the United States. At 41, she became the youngest person ever to hold that position. According to Bill Moyers, she has brought new voices and audiences for poetry in the American capital and vigorously promoted poetry across the country. Her poems in Thomas and Beulah, about imagined moments in the lives of her maternal grand parents, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1987.
Rita Dove's article of poetical faith is this: 'By making us stop for a moment, poetry gives us an opportunity to think about ourselves as human beings on this planet and what we mean to each other.'
When Rita Dove visited some classes at her daughter's school and realised that many kids there were afraid of reading. She was pained to note that reading wasn't a joy for them and that they were much more adept with computer and other electronic media. She wrote a beautiful poem titled 'THE FIRST BOOK' to encourage students to discover the infinite joy of reading. Here is this poem:
Open it.
Go ahead, it won't bite.
Well.....may be a little.
More a nip, like. A tingle.
It's pleasurable, really.
You see, it keeps on opening.
You may fall in.
Sure, it's hard to get started;
Remember learning to use
Knife and fork? Dig in:
You'll never reach bottom.
It's not like it's the end of the world-
Just the world as you think
You know it.
I am very fond of Chinese poetry. Though I do not know the Chinese language, yet I have read several splendid English translations of Chinese Poetry. Chuang Tzu was born in 369 BC in Meng (now Shangqiu) in Henan province in China and died in 286 BC. Chuang-tzu, also known as Zhuang Zhou, is considered as one of the most significant of China's early sages of Taoism.
He was a saint, a mystic and a poet. His teachings have exerted a great influence on the development of Chinese Buddhism. They have also had a considerable impact on Chinese landscape painting and poetry. Here is his poem on the 'Perfect Man.' I think he was paying his tribute to Gautama Buddha.
'The perfect man is a spiritual being,
not bound by flesh.
Were the oceans to boil up around him,
he would not feel hot;
Were the cosmos to freeze up in ice,
he would not feel cold;
Were lightning to crack open the mountains
and fierce winds to heave the seas,
he would not stir at all.
Such a being rides upon the clouds of heaven,
mounts the sun and moon like a chariot,
and passes with ease
beyond the reaches of this world.
Neither life nor death can touch him-
how much less so the concern over
gain or loss?'
This is the eighth part of the series on 'My Favourite Poems and Poets'. The life of any article does not begin on paper. It ends there. An article or a story lives-when it is darkly palpitating within the writer, kicking around inside him, when the writer still has no clear idea of what it will become, still senses it only as a vague presentiment, a promise, a hope. A 'finished' article or story-one polished to perfection-is finished, over. All stories are at their best before they are written.
Hence the tragic urge to keep on writing, for the main thing is not the final full stop, but the choking torrent of commas gushing from one's gullet. A writer's happiness is a bitter happiness because the joy of a labour completed is invariably laced with the hollow tang of disappointment. I find it frightening to complete anything. I live in constant subjection to this fear and perhaps that is why I am sometimes so verbose. I try in whatever way I can to prolong the ecstasy of incompleteness.
(Concluded)
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